Father of Hong Kong design Henry Steiner on how his legacy and that of the city are inextricably linked

Even if you haven’t heard of Steiner, you’ve certainly seen his work—it is everywhere in this city: the HSBC hexagon, the Hong Kong Land “H”, the Jockey Club logo and the emblem on Standard Chartered banknotes. “It’s the ubiquity of his work, more than maybe the career-defining logos from a [equally noteworthy] design perspective that we want to highlight with the exhibition,” says Tina Pang, curator of Hong Kong visual culture at M+. “It’s a way for audiences to encounter how Hong Kong has changed over the years and how Henry really played a key role in shaping how people see the city. Hong Kong made him, but he also made his mark on Hong Kong.” 

His story is as Hong Kong as it gets, filled with movement, transition and flux. Born in Austria in 1934, the designer and his family escaped to New York in 1938 as the German annexation of his homeland occurred, and he remained there until 1961. That year, he landed in Hong Kong for what was meant to be a nine-month stint for Asia Magazine, a weekend supplement targeted at English-speaking readers from across Asia, for which he did advertising work. “One thing led to another and here I am 63 years later,” says Steiner. “But who’s counting?” While naturally times have changed since he landed at Kai Tak that first time, he insists many things—like his symbols—endure. 

“Yes, people keep talking about change—we have tunnels now and a subway system—but the energy and the basic can-do spirit, the Cantonese spirit, that was there all along, it hasn’t changed.” This attitude is what inspired him to keep extending his stay, first with Asia Magazine, then in 1964, when he struck out on his own and created his company Graphic Communications (now Steiner & Co). His first freelance project was the logo he designed for the Hongkong Hilton.

Playing around with the letter H, Steiner created the logo by meshing two H’s together in a way that resembled Chinese lattice work, and was evocative of the Chinese character for “double happiness”. “What’s so incredible when you see his earliest work in Hong Kong is that it’s already so mature; he had a kind of clarity to his work that that hadn’t existed in the city before,” says Pang. Steiner had bought with him graphic design experience formed at a time—it was the era of Life magazine and Mad Men—when commercial visual culture was increasingly entering the mainstream. In Hong Kong, he adapted his approach to reflect local sensibilities and came to be known for crafting designs that fused Asian and western aesthetics in the composition and typography. 

The timing of Steiner’s arrival in Hong Kong was serendipitous. It was a period of opportunity and possibility, but also uncertainty—an ideal combination for those involved in building the city’s identity. “The riots in the Sixties, particularly 1967, had caused a lot of people to leave,” says fellow designer Margaret Au-Yeung, Steiner’s wife and director of Steiner & Co, plunging us into a sense of cultural déjà vu. “Everyone was migrating or thinking about migrating to other cities, so there were many attempts to rebuild confidence in Hong Kong.” 

Steiner was involved in developing the branding for projects like Progress Hong Kong, a showcase exhibition staged by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council in 1975, a brochure for which is part of M+’s collection. Such initiatives were also leading to new brands and companies—and they needed new logos. It was around this time, the early 70s, that his big break came, and he created what he’s perhaps best known for: the HSBC hexagon. HSBC, then called HongkongBank, was looking to unify its various brand identities, and reached out to Steiner. At the time, Au-Yeung was the head of its design department, and it was then the pair first met. “He was highly respected and already had established himself at that time,” Au-Yeung recalls. “He also could get away with a lot, postponing deadlines and such, because he was charming and a great salesman.”

Steiner says that designing this logo was one of his biggest challenges, mainly because of the magnitude of the company and the extent of agendas and perspectives to consider. He called for company-wide submissions from staff, including those overseas. “It allowed staff overseas let off steam and to have their say. I also wanted them to see how hard it was,” says the designer of the process. 

As a part of his procedure, Steiner’s introduced a written essay for the bank’s annual reports communicating the branding and ideology in story form. “He is an extremely good storyteller,” says Au-Yeung. “And that’s what graphic design is really about—communication.” As Steiner puts it, “Being a graphic designer is somewhere between being an architect and tailor: it’s more business than aesthetics, and really, it’s about communication.” 

With the upcoming M+ show, Steiner hopes that as well as “witnessing the history and robust transformation of Hong Kong”, visitors “leave the exhibition with some understanding of what graphic design is and can accomplish”. And while he may have turned his professional back on art—without discovering graphic design, he says, “I would have been an illustrator for pulp magazines, which would have been less money and harder work”—that’s not to say he isn’t a fan. 

“He isn’t someone who doesn’t appreciate art. In fact it’s quite the opposite—there are lots of references to the world of art and photography in his works,” says Pang. And in turn, he has been the subject and inspiration for many in the art world. Most recently, his designs are seen in American artist Sarah Morris’s film ETC (2024), named in honour of the electronic teller card, the city’s own ATM network service launched in 1980 that marked the first shift to computerised banking; Steiner came up with the system’s name. The film, which premiered on the M+ façade this January, then moved to Tai Kwun as a part of Morris’s exhibition that finished on April 16, is a visual ode to Hong Kong, capturing aspects of it through common objects and both landmarks and daily spaces such as the old Vitasoy factory and fruit markets. Steiner appears in the film, flicking through some of the banknotes and old annual reports he designed. 

With the premiere of Morris’s ETC, and his 90th birthday in February, 2024 has already been a hallmark year for Steiner. The M+ exhibition serves as a culmination of a legacy that has spanned over six decades; while he may have slowed down, with his firm now focusing more on archival work, Steiner continues to work on selected projects, always striving for the next legendary logo. You’d expect nothing less of a man who, when asked what his favourite project and design is, replies without hesitation: “the next one”. 

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